Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the pois-onous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong breeze blows!
Flee into your solitude! you have lived too closely to the small and the pitiful. Flee from their invisible vengeance! For you they have nothing but vengeance.
No longer raise your arm against them! They are innumerable, and it is not your task to shoo flies.
Innumerable are the small and pitiful ones; and rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin of many a proud structure.
You are not stone; but already have you become hollow from many drops. You will yet break and burst from the many drops.
I see you exhausted by poisonous flies; I see you bleeding and torn at a hundred spots; and your pride refuses even to be angry.
They would have blood from you in all innocence; blood is what bloodless souls crave- and therefore they sting in all innocence.
But you, profound one, you suffer too profoundly even from small wounds; and before you have healed, the same poison-worm crawls over your hand.
You are too proud to kill these gluttons. But take care lest it be your fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around you also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to your skin and your blood.
They flatter you, as one flatters a God or devil; they whimper before you, as before a God or devil; What does it come to! They are flatterers and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to you as friendly ones. But that has always been the prudence of cowards. Yes! cowards are wise!
They think much about you with their petty souls- you are always sus-pect to them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.
They punish you for all your virtues. They pardon you entirely- for your errors.
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Because you are gentle and of honest character, you say: «Guiltless are they for their small existence.» But their petty souls think: «Guilty is every great existence.»
Even when you are gentle towards them, they still feel themselves des-pised by you; and they repay your beneficence with secret maleficence.
Your silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once you are humble enough to be vain.
What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!
In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance.
You did not see how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an waning fire?
Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors, for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you, and would rather suck your blood.
Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you-that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude- and there, where a rough strong breeze blows. It is not your lot to shoo flies.-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 13 Chastity
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye says it- they cannot conceive of anything better on earth than to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth still has spirit in it!
If only you were perfect- at least as animals! But to animals belongs innocence.
Do I counsel you to kill your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but al-most a vice with many.
They are chaste, to be sure: but the bitch, lust, looks enviously out of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit does this creature follow them, with its discord.
And how nicely can the bitch, lust, beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it!
You love tragedies and all that breaks the heart? But I am distrustful of your bitch.
Your eyes are too cruel, and you seek lustfully for sufferers. Has not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of pity?
And I give this parable to you: Many who tried to cast out their devil, went themselves into swine.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell- to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.
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Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, does the discern-ing one go unwillingly into its waters.
There are some who are chaste from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and more often than you.
They laugh also at chastity, and ask: «What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us, and not we to it.
We offered that guest harbor and heart: now it dwells with us- let it stay as long as it will!»-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 14 The Friend
«THERE is always one too many about me»- thinks the hermit. «Always one and one- eventually that makes two!»
I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it, if there were not a friend?
The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.
Ah! there are too many depths for all hermits. Therefore, do they long so much for a friend and his height.
Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
«Be at least my enemy!»- thus speaks true reverence, which dares not ask for friendship.
If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.
One ought still to honor the enemy in one’s friend. Can you go near to your friend, and not go over to him?
In a friend one shall have one’s best enemy. You shall be closest to him with your heart when you withstand him.
You would wear no raiment before your friend? It is in honor of your friend that you show yourself to him as you are? But he sends you to the devil for that!
He who makes no secret of himself shocks: so much reason have you to fear nakedness! Aye, if you were gods, you might then be ashamed of clothing!
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You can not adorn yourself fine enough for your friend; for you shall be to him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Did you ever see your friend asleep- and saw how he looks? What is the face of your friend? It is your own face, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.
Did you ever see your friend asleep? were you not shocked that your friend looked like that? O my friend, man is something that must be overcome.
In guessing and keeping silent, the friend shall be a master: you must not want to see everything. Your dreams will tell you what your friend does when awake.
Let your pity be a guess: to know first if your friend wants pity. Per-haps he loves in you the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let your pity for your friend be hidden under a hard shell; you shall break a tooth on it. Thus it will have delicacy and sweetness.
Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own chains, but can nevertheless free his friend.
Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.
Far too long have slave and tyrant been concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always attack and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who of you is capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, you men, and your sparingness of soul! As much as you give to your friend, I will give even to my enemy, and will not be-come poorer for it.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship! Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 15
The Thousand and One Goals
Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and evil.
No people could live without first
